Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, where today I’m delighted to be chatting to Ren Hutchings about her debut novel Under Fortunate Stars, which is out this week from Solaris. A brilliant space opera full of great characters, accidental time travel, corporate bureaucracy and unwilling heroes, this book is full of mystery and warmth and wonder, and I absolutely loved it. I couldn’t be happier to have the chance to talk to Ren about the story, the setting and some of the themes she’s explored within it, so read on to find out more about this fantastic new science fiction novel (and make sure you keep going right to the end, where you’ll find a link to an original song that Ren has collaborated on, to accompany the book’s release).
First off, let’s take a look at the publisher’s synopsis to give you a quick sense of what the book is about:
Two Ships. One Chance To Save The Future.
Fleeing the final days of the generations-long war with the alien Felen, smuggler Jereth Keeven’s freighter the Jonah breaks down in a strange rift in deep space, with little chance of rescue—until they encounter the research vessel Gallion, which claims to be from 152 years in the future.
The Gallion’s chief engineer Uma Ozakka has always been fascinated with the past, especially the tale of the Fortunate Five, who ended the war with the Felen. When the Gallion rescues a run-down junk freighter, Ozakka is shocked to recognize the Five’s legendary ship—and the Five’s famed leader, Eldric Leesongronski, among the crew.
But nothing else about Leesongronski and his crewmates seems to match up with the historical record. With their ships running out of power in the rift, more than the lives of both crews may be at stake…
With that done, over to Ren and on with the interview!
Photo credit: Ren Hutchings
Track of Words: To start things off, welcome to Track of Words and congratulations on the imminent publication of your debut novel! How do you feel now that Under Fortunate Stars is almost here?
Ren Hutchings: Can I answer this with an excited screaming gif? This story has been with me for such a long time, and I can’t wait to finally share it with readers. I feel like this:
ToW: What sort of story would you say Under Fortunate Stars is? What can readers expect from it?
RH: Under Fortunate Stars is a story about accidental time travel, a history nerd to the rescue, and the perils of meeting your heroes. It’s a character-driven space opera that takes place mainly in deep space, but the flashback chapters will take you to several different worlds across the galaxy through the memories and experiences of the characters.
Readers can expect lots of fun favourite sci-fi tropes, found-family vibes and ride-or-die friendships, lovable rogues, telepathic aliens and big galactic stakes.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
RH: UFS has four points of view: two of the Jonah crew from the past timeline (whose perspectives we get in flashbacks) and two people from the present on the research vessel Gallion.
In the past, you’ve got Jereth – a witty, irreverent smuggler and con artist – and his best friend Eldric, aka “Leeg,” a cynical mathematical genius with a tragic past. In the present, you’ve got Uma, an engineer on the Gallion who’s a lifelong history buff and knows lots of obscure facts about the historical voyage of the Jonah. And finally, you’ve got Shaan, a disgruntled administrator on the Gallion, who hates her job only slightly less than she hates the idea that people might find out the dodgy secrets she’s been hiding about her own past.
ToW: What was your thinking behind writing a story set in what is essentially quite a hopeful setting, with the big galactic war being in the past (sort of)?
RH: I think that stark difference in setting – between the Gallion’s hopeful, peaceful era of history and the Jonah’s era of ceaseless interstellar war – is exactly what creates a lot of the initial tension between the crews, because their worldviews are inherently very different. Everyone on the Gallion has grown up in a time of prosperity and cooperation with the alien Felen, and they no longer see them as enemies. And, while they know that the war happened, it’s very much a thing of the past for them.
Uma has been interested in history her whole life, and she specifically knows a lot about the war era. To her, these are historical events and stories that feel very removed from her daily life. So when she talks to the Jonah crew, for whom those same events are fresh and real and “now,” there’s a disconnect between these characters that has to be resolved.
In the Jonah’s time, it seemed inevitable that the Felen were about to annihilate humanity, and the Jonah crew very much believed that human civilization was heading into the end times. So when they get told that 152 years later there’s this peaceful future, that’s pretty tough for them to get their heads around. They have a hard time understanding it, even before they learn that their crew had a crucial part to play in ending that hopeless war.
ToW: How much fun did you have incorporating all of the ZeyCorp corporate lingo and bureaucracy into the story? Did any of your own experience with the corporate workplace sneak in with some of that?!
RH: Oh, definitely! I think anyone who has ever worked in a large office setting, or any situation where there’s a corporate framework around their workplace, will relate to something about how ZeyCorp runs. There’s this sense of collective exasperation among the crew with a lot of the company policies, especially the silly bureaucratic things that hold up their progress on a problem or that annoy them during their workday.
But there’s equally a layer of absurdity and comedy there, because this ship is extremely well-organized and has a highly-trained crew…for running a corporate research outfit. They’re not at all equipped for the situation they end up in, to deal with improvised interstellar diplomacy or an apparent time travel incident.
It’s like: “Well, we can’t find a company policy that explains how we ought to handle this… so what now?” And ultimately, even those very procedure-driven, cautious characters who are higher up in that bureaucracy have to stop and think outside of those constraints. If they’re going to survive, they have to find a different way of looking at problems, and start using the skills and resources they have in new ways.
ToW: The way you’ve constructed this, it’s a time travel story but in a slightly different way to normal – almost time clash really. What challenges did you come up against while working out the time travel elements here?
RH: Working out the sequence of events – not only the chronological order they happened in, but the order the reader sees them in – was definitely the most challenging part of editing this story. The narrative is non-linear, and there are flashbacks interspersed throughout that gradually show the “how we got here” back story for several main characters. And finding that order was tricky, because it’s important not only for unfolding the plot and keeping the tension, but also essential to getting the emotional notes right. Before you’re shown an emotionally resonant moment for a character, you often need to see something about their past so you can understand why they react the way they do.
I couldn’t resist including this photo of Under Fortunate Stars‘ lovely advance review copies from Ren’s website.
ToW: Those time travel elements you’ve included allowed you to do some really interesting things with characters meeting their heroes – or at the very least some incredibly famous names – and inevitably having to deal with reality not exactly matching up with history. What drew you to dealing with this sort of situation in fiction?
RH: One of the key things about the time travel in this story is that it’s completely unintentional, so the characters don’t really know how it all works. And I think that lack of certainty meshes in a really interesting way with the big time travel questions: Can you change things in the past, and would you change something if you could? Should you try to meddle or fix things if something has changed in the timeline? How can you know what the “right” outcome is when there are big gaps in history’s records? And can history even be changed?
These are all questions that have enthralled me in time travel stories, and I thought it would be fascinating to put a bunch of characters who have different opinions on these things into a situation where they all have to agree on what to do. Crucially, it’s a situation where these are not hypothetical questions, and the characters’ decisions very quickly become life or death. The fate of the future as they know it might be at stake, and it’s all in their collective hands.
In the Gallion crew’s case, they’re faced with these “heroes” who they’ve seen idolized in historical documentaries and pop culture their whole lives. But not only do the heroes not seem to be on the correct mission, they seem to have no interest in being the Peacemakers at all. On the flip side, you have the Jonah crew who are suddenly faced with this shocking idea that they’ve been mythologized as heroic figures in the future. And they have choices to make about whether they’re willing to take up that mantle. All of them together have to re-evaluate their idea of what a hero actually is, and what kind of people are capable of carrying out these extraordinary actions to save humanity.
ToW: Alongside the perils of meeting your heroes, you’ve also explored the reimagination of history, a theme which touches on all sorts from the natural deviation of fact from truth over time to the power of overt propaganda. Was this a natural result of where the plot went, or rather something you specifically set out to tackle?
RH: Like many speculative fiction writers with books that came out in the past few years, at the time when I started drafting this story I didn’t realize exactly how resonant some of the story’s themes would become with current events. But at the same time, these themes have always been relevant, because the same questions pop up over and over again when we study history as far back as we have records. Who decides what “the truth” is? Who decides what gets recorded and which records survive? What gets lost in translation, or obscured (either intentionally or unintentionally) throughout generations of retelling, reimagining and transcription?
The importance of applying that critical lens to primary sources is something that I’ve thought about a lot, both as a history student at university and also as someone who’s interested in time travel fiction. If someone went back in time, even if they were an expert on the historical time period they’re going to, there is zero doubt that they would learn many, many things that were unexpected and wildly different than they imagined.
ToW: Are you viewing Under Fortunate Stars as a standalone story, or do you think you’ll return to this world – whether these characters or not – again?
RH: It is a standalone story, in the sense that the ending clearly concludes all the main storylines and ties up the plot – although I have definitely left a few little questions up to the reader’s imagination!
I wouldn’t rule out returning to the UFS universe again in some form, and I do have an idea for a companion novella. There’s also a lot of material that didn’t make it into the book that could certainly become short stories or spinoff pieces one day!
ToW: Lastly, if you had the opportunity to work for ZeyCorp what position do you think you’d take?
RH: Hmm, that is a good question. I don’t think I’d enjoy the pressure of being in the Command team. And, while I’m keenly interested in space science, I don’t know if I’d want to work with the researchers full-time. You know… unlike Shaan, I might actually enjoy being the ship’s Facilities Coordinator! I genuinely like coordinating things, and being that vital connecting thread between different departments. I used to work in production and I think I could apply some of those same skills to Shaan’s job. It would be cool to get to spend time working with everyone in the crew across all the different parts of the ship’s activities, from the rotating researchers to the Command crew to the engineers. (Also, if we did run into any weird time-travelling historical figures, I would probably be the one to get to show them around!)
ToW: To finish off, as I promised at the top of the article here’s a link to where you can listen to The Flight of the Jonah, an original song that Ren collaborated on with “genre-shifting folk-rock band” The Burning Hell. What I love about this, aside from its catchiness, is that it’s a real-world version of a song that’s directly referenced in the book! I’d definitely recommend checking out the article in that link and giving the song a listen.
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Ren Hutchings is a speculative fiction writer, writing mentor, and perpetual sci-fi fan. She spent most of the past decade working in game dev while plotting twisty space books. Ren previously managed communications for a non-profit arts council. She graduated with a BA in History before completing a year of grad school in archaeology, indulging her lifelong passion for nerding out about the past just as much as the future. She loves pop science, unexplained mysteries, 90s music, collecting outdated electronics, and pondering about alternate universes.
Find out more at Ren’s website.
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Thanks so much to Ren for getting involved with this interview and writing such great answers! I really can’t recommend Under Fortunate Stars enough – keep an eye out for a review coming soon – so I would definitely suggest you run straight out and order yourself a copy (which you can read while listening to The Flight of the Jonah!).
Check out the links below to order your copy* of Under Fortunate Stars:
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